Brackish Algae Overload

[ade_austin]

Right,
I've got a brackish tank with 2 spotted puffers in it. It looks disgusting all the time because of the algae build up. There are no plants in there at all but there is brown slime like stuff hanging off of everything. I'm having to clean it every two days (this includes a water change and the addition of Green Away chemicals).

Obviously, this is not good for the fish and the puffers do jump out from time to time whilst I'm doing this.. Somehow they're still alive...

I thought of converting a plec to brackish to sort it out but read on this web site that this is a no no.. There must be something "living" I can get to help control this problem.

Any ideas please.....

ADE

 

[Alien Anna]

A shrimp would probably be your best bet, but I suspect puffers might eat it.

The real question is: what is causing your algae? Whatever creature you buy to eat the algae nothing can eat so much that it can keep up with runaway algae. It sounds like you have brown algae, which is related to low light. OTOH, if you have more light you'd probably get brown algae (due to offending the Algae gods, I presume).

Algae needs the following to survive:
1. Nitrate
2. Phosphate
3. Light
4. Carbon dioxide and oxygen

The first two can come from fish waste, excess food (particularly protein based food) and often tap water (test your tap water for nitrates and you may get a shock). Over-stocking and too infrequent water changes can make the situation worse, but if the nitrates are coming from your tap water, water changes could even have the opposite effect.

The solution is to institute more frequent water changes (with RO water if your tap water is contaminated, or use a nitragon filter) and reduce feeds. Zeolite in your filter can help remove phosphates but use it with caution if you have live plants.

Another way is to out-compete the algae with live plants. For this you need a lot more light and fast growing plants like vallis, hornwart, crypts etc.